Dutch Consumer Association calls for Vista boycott

bilateralrope · Post by **bilateralrope** » 2007-10-14 03:02am

The Dutch Consumers Association has called for a boycott of Windows Vista, after the software giant refused to offer free copies of Windows XP to users who are having problems with Vista.

A spokesman for the Consumentenbond says that the product has many teething problems, and "is just not ready". The association claims it received over 5000 complaints about Vista. Many printers and other hardware failed to work, the association says, computers crash frequently and peripherals are very slow.

On Thursday the association met Microsoft Netherland to discuss the problems. But offering XP to users is not a solution, according to Microsoft, which notes that many new peripherals are developed explicitly for Vista.

However, the Consumers Association points out that Microsoft offers XP to business clients when they are having problems. To combat critics, Microsoft Netherlands launched a website on Friday which addresses many issues raised by the Consumentenbond.

In forums, many Dutch Vista users complain that the Consumentenbond is making a mountain out of a molehill. Many problems seem to occur on older systems or with older peripherals.

Why would offering XP to people having trouble with Vista not be an option ?

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2007-10-14 03:26am

Couldn't people just do research before spending money on an OS to make sure that it will work with all of their hardware?

Temjin · Post by **Temjin** » 2007-10-14 03:31am

General Zod wrote:Couldn't people just do research before spending money on an OS to make sure that it will work with all of their hardware?

Why bother spending time? After all, the nice man in front of them who's working on commission is telling them that it'll work great on their system!

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2007-10-14 03:42am

Reaction to news, in short: good. Very good.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2007-10-14 03:44am

Temjin wrote: Why bother spending time? After all, the nice man in front of them who's working on commission is telling them that it'll work great on their system!

15 minutes of Googling does not take that much effort.

bilateralrope · Post by **bilateralrope** » 2007-10-14 04:47am

General Zod wrote:Couldn't people just do research before spending money on an OS to make sure that it will work with all of their hardware?

Microsoft seems to of done all it can to pull XP from store shelves so that they only sell Vista to consumers here in New Zealand, I'm assuming they have done the same elsewhere. When I decided to buy a laptop a few months back I had a lot of trouble finding one that had XP instead of Vista, and I couldn't find one that I could buy without paying for windows.

I even had one of the staff at Harvey Norman tell me that one of their laptops they were selling with Vista couldn't handle it (I've looked into this, it appears he was telling the truth here). But Vista was the only OS they would sell any of their computers with.

Laughing Mechanicus · Post by **Laughing Mechanicus** » 2007-10-14 04:53am

General Zod wrote:
Temjin wrote: Why bother spending time? After all, the nice man in front of them who's working on commission is telling them that it'll work great on their system!
15 minutes of Googling does not take that much effort.

Yeah, because for average John Smith it's really only going to take 15 minutes on Google to succesfully work out which hardware in their system can run Vista. Better let my Mum know - she's so good with model numbers, product revisions and drivers. That's before we even consider that there are people actively trying to misrepresent the situation for their own financial benefit.

Additionally most people are getting Vista bundled with a new PC. It came pre-installed on my Dad's new laptop only for him to discover it was incompatible with his mobile phones wireless modem functionality, rendering it almost useless to him because he works abroad in areas with non-existent wireless internet. Think how many scanners, printers, digital cameras etc... people have that have 'Just worked' for so long are now being rendered obsolete when they buy a new system.

Temjin · Post by **Temjin** » 2007-10-14 05:11am

Microsoft seems to of done all it can to pull XP from store shelves so that they only sell Vista to consumers here in New Zealand, I'm assuming they have done the same elsewhere. When I decided to buy a laptop a few months back I had a lot of trouble finding one that had XP instead of Vista, and I couldn't find one that I could buy without paying for windows.

I even had one of the staff at Harvey Norman tell me that one of their laptops they were selling with Vista couldn't handle it (I've looked into this, it appears he was telling the truth here). But Vista was the only OS they would sell any of their computers with.

When I bought my laptop a few month ago, there wasn't one computer in the store that had Vista. When I asked about it, they said they didn't trust Vista yet and it's a smarter decision to run XP at this polnt.

I ended up buying laptop from there.

Phantasee · Post by **Phantasee** » 2007-10-14 01:32pm

Zod, don't be retarded. Have you tried finding a computer with XP? A new PC, from one of the larger chain stores, like Future Shop/Best Buy/Staples or where ever people buy computers. It's near impossible.

And even if you can get one with XP, it's usually an older system that's on clearance, and not even one of the good old ones. They're the crap ones no one bought the first time.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2007-10-14 01:47pm

What so surprising about that? Microsoft did the same damn thing every single time a new OS came out - consumers are relatively quickly forced into the new version, while businesses are given enough time to do it at their own pace. This criticism could be (and was) levied against XP when it came out and obsoleted peripherals, had major compatibility problems, and so on. And yet, they aren't and weren't boycotting XP - imagine that.

Microsoft let bad, often based on FUD (DRM et cetera), PR to take over its Vista launch. Any major OS revision will have those problems to an extent and Vista probably has the least, at least as major overhauls go (not Win9x minor touchups), yet with Vista its seems to be trendy to bash it extensively for those faults while pretending that XP existed since the dawn of time and never had them.

There is also very little bashing of the various companies whose incompetence and lack of timeliness with coming out with Vista drivers (or, often, excepting certain components, merely Vista compatible since very few drivers need to be rewritten, most merely need a UAC compatible installer) - something that is a decidedly negative phenomenon for those same consumers doing the bashing since putting pressure on Microsoft resolves very little, while putting pressure on those companies to produce drivers compatible with Vista a full year and a half after the driver models were finalized would possibly actually lead to some positive results . I'd be far more impressed with this Dutch group if it put out a boycott list of all manufacturers that still don't have Vista drivers for its supported products.

EDIT: corrected Danish->Dutch - my eyes read one thing while my mind understood another.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2007-10-14 02:02pm

Netko wrote:What so surprising about that? Microsoft did the same damn thing every single time a new OS came out - consumers are relatively quickly forced into the new version, while businesses are given enough time to do it at their own pace. This criticism could be (and was) levied against XP when it came out and obsoleted peripherals, had major compatibility problems, and so on. And yet, they aren't and weren't boycotting XP - imagine that.

Microsoft let bad, often based on FUD (DRM et cetera), PR to take over its Vista launch. Any major OS revision will have those problems to an extent and Vista probably has the least, at least as major overhauls go (not Win9x minor touchups), yet with Vista its seems to be trendy to bash it extensively for those faults while pretending that XP existed since the dawn of time and never had them.

Brings to mind a Vista blog post.

TechReport wrote: Ask anyone in the techie community about Windows Vista, and they'll tell you the same thing: Microsoft's latest operating system is a failure. It's slow, bloated, and riddled with flaws. Nobody's buying it, and it's pretty much Redmond's biggest blunder since Windows ME. There's a very strong consensus on this, and you'll no doubt conclude that Vista is indeed both an awful piece of software and a commercial failure—that is, until you talk to actual Vista users or, heaven forbid, Microsoft itself.

There seems to be a striking difference between what the tech press and techies in general say about Vista, and how Vista users actually feel about Vista. As someone who's been using Vista on his primary PC for ten to twelve hours a day since February 17, I can attest to this first-hand: it just isn't anywhere near as bad as everyone says. It's not even a little bad—I can honestly say I haven't once in the past seven months felt like moving back to Windows XP. In fact, I feel like I'm missing out when I have to use XP on another machine.

I'm not the only one to feel this way, either. Out of the tech-savvy people I know, only a couple have reinstalled XP after trying out Vista. The rest might not have any strong feelings one way or the other—a friend of mine got Vista on his new laptop and doesn't see a reason to install it on his main PC, for instance—but they've all settled in just fine as far as I'm aware. The last time I heard somebody say, "I'm thinking about installing Vista, but I hear it's awful," the response was, "No, it's really not that bad." And the last person I know who upgraded said verbatim, "Vista isn't as terrible as I'd suspected."

Of course, this is all anecdotal evidence, and everyone knows Vista isn't selling well at all. Right? Well, maybe not. Following the Vista launch, Microsoft posted its highest quarterly profits yet, lauding "robust demand" for the new operating system. In May, Microsoft boasted that it had sold nearly 40 million copies of Vista. In the company's July financial statement, Microsoft credited Vista as the primary source for a 15% year-over-year increase in OEM revenue. Yes, XP demand is still strong, and copies of Vista aren't flying off store shelves like hot cakes (nor should they considering Microsoft's pricing scheme), but Vista is hardly failing commercially.

Despite the above, tech journalists and bloggers alike post article after article clamoring about Vista's utter failure as an operating system. Those articles go from citing "low" sales numbers to throwing around the Big Bad Three-Letter Acronym—DRM. Such articles invariably fail to mention that Vista's only built-in DRM relates to protected Blu-ray and HD DVD media, that it's necessary to play those media at their intended resolution, and that XP does basically the same thing. People like Ed Bott occasionally attempt to quell the hysteria, but they largely go unheard.

Some even less informed articles rant on about Vista's high memory use—evidence of masses of bloat, they say, when in reality it's little more than Microsoft's SuperFetch memory system in action. Complaints of massive hardware incompatibilities are rampant, too, even though hardware support has largely improved in the few months following the Vista launch, and the fault lies with hardware vendors—not Microsoft—to begin with. The list goes on.

So what's really wrong with Vista? It's not flawed technically and its hardware requirements aren't outrageous (the Aero user interface can be turned off, and although it does seem a tad more memory-hungry than XP, memory is extremely cheap nowadays). It won't drown you under unwanted DRM software, and it won't kill your family, club baby seals, or crucify puppies. Features like User Account Control prompts are a little annoying, but they can be tweaked or disabled, and they're actually useful from a security standpoint. Not to mention Mac OS X, Linux, and any modern operating system has a similar system in place. Hardware and software support left something to be desired originally, but as I mentioned, it has improved significantly since the retail Vista launch eight months ago.

Personally, I think the bad press Vista receives is simply a feedback loop. Geeks don't like change, and they're often very vocal about the fact. Throw in some fear, uncertainty, and doubt from misinformed bloggers and tech journalists, and you have geeks telling each other to hold on to Windows XP like it's the best OS ever made—even though in reality, it's very much outdated and flawed in many ways. Of course, this is hardly the first time a new Microsoft operating system has been shunned by the techie elite. Many geeks similarly recoiled in horror from XP following its release in 2001, and I personally know some who stuck with Windows 98 SE for a couple of years after XP's introduction.

In conclusion, I think too long has passed between Windows releases, and I think geeks have simply forgotten what operating system upgrades are all about. Most of those railing against Vista now will likely make the jump eventually, and the rest had better be ready to wait a long, long time if they expect a better step up from XP than Vista.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2007-10-14 02:19pm

The quoted article is pretty much spot on and expresses my opinions on the matter in a more detailed and verbose way.

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2007-10-14 02:54pm

There's nothing surprising about vendor lock-in, nor is there much positive about that. Boasting high sales for a system with an almost 100% vendor lock-in for a monopolistic corporation that routinely got punished for it's practices - at least in Europe - is nothing but saying the obvious.

Which is "we here at Microsoft own your sorry ass. We make systems with the functionality we want, we care little about scalability or, god forbid, redundant compatibility - since this is for losers. We will force you to have hardware and software upgrades regardless of necessity; we will create that necessity to gather profit. In short, you're a zero and our software rules your computers".

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2007-10-14 03:57pm

Really, the only problem I have with Vista is that most HP printers don't have drivers yet, so they won't do shared or network printing. This is only a problem because I have to try and make it work for people who have their old HP printer and expect it to work on their new PC.

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2007-10-14 05:37pm

I've been using Vista and XP in a dual boot configuration. While I have experienced occasional slowdowns, the system is by no means a failure to me.

If by anything, this mass hysteria is due in part to the underlying "hate Microsoft" sentiment among the geeks. It has been fashionable for a long time to hate the company. Though I hate the company, Vista has worked well enough for me, enough that I boot up in Vista by default now.

If by anything, the other companies are pushing the blame on Microsoft because of their sorry incompetence in not getting the drivers ready in time for the operating system.

bilateralrope · Post by **bilateralrope** » 2007-10-14 05:51pm

On Thursday the association met Microsoft Netherland to discuss the problems. But offering XP to users is not a solution, according to Microsoft, which notes that many new peripherals are developed explicitly for Vista.

To me it sounds like part of the reason this boycott is being called is that Microsoft is refusing to offer XP to people who are having problems with Vista. It doesn't seem to matter much that most people are having no problems, just that Microsoft is refusing something that appears to be an obvious solution to at least try.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2007-10-14 06:47pm

General Zod wrote:Couldn't people just do research before spending money on an OS to make sure that it will work with all of their hardware?

How is that relevant to the idea that Microsoft should offer a downgrade option to people who have trouble with its latest offering? Microsoft has spent the last 20 years trying to convince everyone in the world that they are "user friendly", remember? You're not supposed to need to do a lot of research before buying Microsoft products.

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2007-10-14 07:12pm

bilateralrope wrote:
On Thursday the association met Microsoft Netherland to discuss the problems. But offering XP to users is not a solution, according to Microsoft, which notes that many new peripherals are developed explicitly for Vista.
To me it sounds like part of the reason this boycott is being called is that Microsoft is refusing to offer XP to people who are having problems with Vista. It doesn't seem to matter much that most people are having no problems, just that Microsoft is refusing something that appears to be an obvious solution to at least try.

IIRC, you do have downgrade rights from Vista Business to XP.
However, this doesn't help the average home user whose machine comes preinstalled with Vista Home Premium or Home Basic, and is having problems getting things to work because the hardware drivers are buggy, lacking in features compared to the XP drivers, or nonexistent.

I've been dual booting Vista/XP since March, and while Vista's made a lot of strides, driver support is still lacking and certain bugs (like the folder view one) that should have never made it into the released product, still exist.

I do all of my 'serious' work and gaming on XP, and use Vista as a 'futz around' OS for right now because of the shaky hardware drivers.
And while the driver problem isn't solely MS's fault, all the average home user knows it that it's Microsoft's OS, and if it doesn't work, it's because MS screwed up.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-10-14 07:57pm

What's this folder view issue? I'm using Vista, and I have no problem gaming (beyond things that hate the user-rights system), and the most current drivers for video/sound/etc seem fine to me. Vista isnt the fantastic orgasm it's marketed as, but it's not in any way worthless or difficult to use.

The 'manipulating large files takes eight million years' bug still seems to be around sometimes, though, and Vista *hates* larger (1GB+) executables.

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2007-10-14 08:02pm

When I set my default folder view to 'details', and I view a folder that I haven't ever viewed in the past, it defaults back to 'tiles', and I fucking *hate* tile view.

A friend of mine told me that while he wasn't sure it's true, he read somewhere that for some reason, MS has Vista do that by design, so it's technically not a bug if he's right.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-10-14 08:04pm

Hey - I thought I was just forgetting what I'd done, but mine doesn't keep the folder settings properly either: I use list for most folders, but it keeps switching back to details or tiles.

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2007-10-14 08:09pm

Stark wrote:Hey - I thought I was just forgetting what I'd done, but mine doesn't keep the folder settings properly either: I use list for most folders, but it keeps switching back to details or tiles.

Misery loves company.

As far as gaming goes, the last forceware release was a huge improvement for my system as far as getting acceptable framerates at high resolution.

At least now my 8800GTS under Vista doesn't feel like a 6600 when playing IL2 1946 anymore.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-10-14 08:16pm

I only recently started using Vista, and apparently I missed the early part where driver support for video/audio was basically non-existent. The default MS drivers for my audio, for instance, make it sound like shit and actually loses me performance in games, but the manufacturer drivers are great.

And hey, I was using a 6600 until last week!

Resinence · Post by **Resinence** » 2007-10-14 08:34pm

Glocksman, go get the patch from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105
It's not part of auto-update for some reason, but it can massively boost framerates (and I really do mean, it's like a miracle patch

. For the techies, it removes a virtual memory limitation that has stuck around for a while, you probably know which one I'm talking about, 2GB, yeah. Install the patch, and I bet your framerates will be within 5% of XP assuming a decent machine. Infact WiC runs better in vista than XP for me

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2007-10-14 09:17pm

Not too many complaints about vista for me, other than the utterly cluttered, inconsistent and ugly UI. Made a thread on this, but haven't really bothered to boot Vista in awhile due to lack of time for games, which is all I boot windows for (Windows development is done in WinXP inside a VM).